


Beyond Recourse

by quandong_crumble



Series: It's 3:00 AM, I must be lonely [3]
Category: Marvel Ultimates
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, M/M, Oral Sex, Sibling Incest, Terminal Illnesses, Twincest, Unnegotiated kink play, erotic asphyxiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-25 21:16:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1662725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quandong_crumble/pseuds/quandong_crumble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“I’m a dead man walking, darling,” Tony spits.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Greg’s jaw works silently as he processes that, chooses his words. He’s always thinking things through, never going off half-cocked.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“How long?” He finally asks, his voice rough like it’s an accusation. Like it’s all Tony’s fault there’s a golf-ball sized lump in his brain waiting to kill him.</em>
</p>
<p><em>“Five years if I’m lucky,” Tony says with a smile sharp enough to cut glass. “Only months if you are.”</em><br/> </p>
<p>What if, upon recieving his brain tumour diagnosis, Tony turned to the only family he had left?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond Recourse

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third response to the prompt:
> 
> “It's 3:00 AM and I'm calling you because I don't know who else to talk to.”
> 
> Set in the Ultimates universe, prior to Ultimates 1. The tag for canon divergence is because, in the comics, Tony does not inform his twin brother of his terminal cancer. This fic is merely a “what if he had?”
> 
> Many thanks to my beta and main cheerleader [Saral_Hylor](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Saral_Hylor), who has been nagging me to post this and share it with the world. Also thanks to my test audience [jujitsuelf](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jujitsuelf) and [3White_Mage3](http://archiveofourown.org/users/3White_Mage3), who were very encouraging and provided valuable feedback.
> 
> _Please note, this is very different from the previous works in this series. Please check the tags before you read._

The door shudders and sways. No, Tony corrects himself, doors don’t move like that. He’s the one swaying. Perhaps he did have a little too much to drink. Maybe. Maybe more than a little too much.

He doesn’t quite remember how he got here. He hasn’t exactly lost time, but the details of how he got between the last swanky cocktail lounge and standing here are pleasantly fuzzy. The alcohol buzz is fading though, and the black thoughts are creeping back in. He needs another drink but the door is glaring at him accusingly and he can’t remember if he knocked or not.

The door disappears. No, it swings inward in such an abrupt movement that Tony loses it between one blink and the next. The doorway now frames his mirror image. The flip side of him, without all his faults. Not that he’d ever tell Greg that, no. He’s insufferable enough without confirmation. Besides, the lack of a few, a hundred, specific flaws doesn’t make him better. Or something. The elusive thought slips away and Tony’s left wondering why Greg answered his own door.

“This really shouldn’t surprise me, should it, little brother,” Greg states flatly. He looks like the picture of disapproval, standing there in his pyjamas and dressing gown, looking completely unrumpled by sleep. Looks like Father with the colour washed out, but never tell him that.

“Why are you here?” Greg asks. Like he doesn’t know, like he wouldn’t have paid off someone at the surgery to fax him a copy of Tony’s results before Tony ever saw them himself.

‘It’s 3:00 AM and I’m here because I don’t know who else to talk to,’ he doesn’t say. ‘Because you’re my brother and I need you.

He longs for the days when twenty-two minutes and a lifetime didn’t feel like such an insurmountable gap. When Greg still looked at him with something like love in his eyes. When they were children and both halves of a whole, yin and yang and the whole world belonged to them. Blond and dark heads pressed together to share secrets and comforts that didn’t bite and tear. Before boarding school and rivalry and disdain. Before something between them became so broken they couldn’t let the weakness, the vulnerability of brotherhood back in.

“Came to let you get the gloating out of the way,” he sneers. “No point putting it off.

Greg’s composure slips for just a moment to display shock, like he really didn’t know. Or maybe he’s just that good an actor, able to inject pretend confusion in his eyes for the flicker of a half-second before the smug mask falls back into place. He steps backwards, one hand on the door, and gestures. “Get inside before you make a scene.”

Tony steps past him and into the dimly lit room. Everything about the place screams Greg, clean lines, minimalist style, stark, bare and sharply angled. There isn’t even a bar. He manages a nonchalant sort of saunter through the huge open-plan living area and props his hip against the sharply angled back of one couch. With ease borne of far too much practice, he slides a flask out of the inner pocket of his jacket, twists off the top and downs a healthy mouthful, thank god for emergency stashes. Greg’s disapproval face turns into a downright scowl and he shuts the door with deliberate care, not letting it slam like Tony would.

“Now,” he says, voice clipped and cold. “Explain.”

Tony laughs. There’s an edge of hysteria to it, making the sound brittle. Could he really not know? Tony’s taken it for granted for years that Greg’s got people following him, keeping tabs. Just like the three people Tony slipped inside Greg’s company and household all this years ago. A poor facsimile of a brotherly bond, forged through mutual spying, but no one has ever accused the Stark family of healthy interpersonal relationships.

“I’m a dead man walking, darling,” Tony spits.

Greg’s jaw works silently as he processes that, chooses his words. He’s always thinking things through, never going off half-cocked.

“How long?” He finally asks, his voice rough like it’s an accusation. Like it’s all Tony’s fault there’s a golf-ball sized lump in his brain waiting to kill him.

“Five years if I’m lucky,” Tony says with a smile sharp enough to cut glass. “Only months if you are.”

He follows that statement with another swig from his flask. Five years doesn’t bear thinking about. Five years is a lifetime, he can do a lot in five years. He can make his mark on the world, stamp it so hard and so deep that they can never erase it. His mark has to mean something, though. It has to be good, has to be worth something. He doesn’t want people to say, ‘Tony Stark, what a waste. He was a drunken lecher.’ He wants people to add, ‘but he changed the world for the better,’ onto the end.

“Months,” Greg repeats. He’s crossing the room with slow steps, stalking like a panther. More like a snow leopard, all pale elegance even in that ridiculous silk dressing gown.

Tony’s hand shakes as he brings the flask up again. He salutes Greg with it, and drains the last of the alcohol. “You win, brother.”

Greg knocks the empty flask out of his hand with a savage movement, suddenly close enough that Tony’s trapped between the couch back and the heat of his body. He smirks at Greg, at the cold rage in his eyes. Except for the eyes it’s always been like looking in a mirror done in the wrong colours, but Greg’s eyes are always cold. Now, they burn with it as he brackets Tony’s hips with his arms, gripping the couch back on either side to trap him.

“I haven’t won yet,” Greg hisses, and then crushes his mouth against Tony’s.

The kiss isn’t gentle. It’s teeth and tongue, biting and bruising, a battle for dominance that Greg wins, always wins, because that’s the only way it can work between them. It’s rivalry and jealousy and disappointment and decades of repressed resentment. It’s I’m sorry, and I’ll hurt you, and how dare you leave me alone now. It’s not enough, like five years won’t be enough.

It’s sibling rivalry gone too far, and the sibling love behind it too twisted, but they’ve been doing this for years now, this battle of I hate yous, dominance clashes that each of them leaves feeling like they’ve won just enough to tide them over until the next round. It’s not gentle at all, the way Greg’s hard hands tear the tie loose from Tony’s throat while Tony roughly shoves that stupid dressing gown down off his shoulders. Tony tugs at the buttons on Greg’s pyjama shirt, hard but just careful enough, so that the buttons slip through buttonholes instead of tearing loose to be lost in the room. It’s habit, being rich never meant you could be careless with your things, not in the Stark household. Careless with each other, though? Greg grips the back of Tony’s neck hard with one hand, nails digging into pale flesh as he directs another brutal kiss. Tony retaliates with teeth, biting Greg’s bottom lip too hard to be playful, and nails, raked down Greg’s chest through the opening in his pyjamas.

Greg pushes away and Tony takes perverse pleasure in the sight of how dishevelled he is. His blond hair tousled, lips red both from kissing and from a sluggishly bleeding split. That ridiculous silk dressing gown is half off, still belted loosely and caught at Greg’s elbows, and Tony delights in the knowledge that only he can reduce his perfect big brother to this, drag him down to the same level of debauchery and beat him with experience. Tony knows he looks as ridiculous, his tie still knotted but loose, his shirt half unbuttoned. He offers a lazy leer in response to Greg’s smug smile.

Greg shucks the dressing gown and the pyjama shirt with one smooth shoulder roll, catching both by the collar as they slide past his left hand. His movements are precise and economical as he folds both in half with the flick of his wrist, then drapes them over the couch back. The red lines from Tony’s nails stand out bright on his chest even in this dim light, four parallel scratches and he loves it, it thrills him, to know he’s marked him this way. Stamped his name deep into whatever Greg has in place of a soul so that in a few months, five years, whenever, when Tony’s erased from this earth he knows a part of him will still be there. Indelible.

“I hope you didn’t come here expecting sympathy from me,” Greg murmurs. In those few seconds he’s regained his composure, regained the upper hand. He closes the distance between them again and grabs Tony’s shoulders with both hands, fingertips pointed and hard. He brings his mouth close to Tony’s ear, blond goatee scratching against black stubble, like rubbing the hard halves of velcro together to hear it rasp.

“I only expect the usual from you,” Tony drawls, even as he leans into the touch of Greg’s cheek against his. “You know, bad temper, terrible fashion sense, no talent at all in bed…”

“This changes nothing,” Greg hisses, breath wet against his ear, then he pushes down with both hands.

And this is it, this is what Tony needs. He needs to know that with the world turned upside down, with five years stuck on his mind, that he can still have this. It’s the broken glass that cuts the lips and the hands and doesn’t hold any wine, but it’s familiar and it feels like love in some damaged way. Tony lets himself be pushed to his knees, dragging his nails down Greg’s front again as he goes, and hooks his fingers in the waistband of Greg’s pyjama pants. One quick tug has them down around Greg’s thighs and Tony runs his hands up through the wiry blond hair dusting the tops of his legs to the thicker thatch of hair at his groin. He frames Greg’s half-hard cock with both hands and leans forward to breathe heavily, teasingly, over the twitching flesh.

“Not hard for me yet, darling?” He taunts. “Don’t tell me you’re having performance issues.”

In retaliation, a rough hand runs through Tony’s hair, fingers winding through the black strands and pulling harshly. Tony laughs through the sting and presses a kiss to the tip of Greg’s rapidly growing erection.

“I love seeing the effect I have on you,” Tony whispers, just loud enough that he knows the other can hear him. He buries his face in Greg’s crotch, rubbing his cheek against the other man’s cock and breathing in expensive soap and his unique musk. It’s heady, it sends a jolt straight to his groin, and he feels his own cock give an interested twitch. He pulls back and settles his hands on Greg’s hips, ghosts his lips over the cock in front of him, then flicks his tongue out and laps at the slit. He hears a sharply indrawn breath and feels the hand in his hair relax minutely. He pulls back further and blows a short puff of air at the wet head.

Greg yanks his head back hard, fist tight in his hair. “Get on with it.”

“Anticipation heightens pleasure, brother,” Tony drawls. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?”

“You’ve never delayed your own gratification in your life,” Greg says. He loosens his grip on Tony’s hair and tries to guide him back towards his dick.

“Oh, I didn’t say I knew from practice,” Tony retorts. He shrugs, a loose roll of his shoulders, and ducks his head to slide his lips teasingly along the shaft of Greg’s penis again. Before Greg can become even more impatient he takes the head between his lips, swirling around the glans with the tip of his tongue, then presses forward in one smooth move, hollowing his cheeks with suction and scraping his teeth just enough against the shaft.

Greg lets out a hiss, but it’s all pleasure, and his hand spasms in Tony’s hair. This is wrong, a level of wrong that Tony once never expected Greg to stoop to, but it’s something that they can share and he’s just messed up enough to admit he wants this. He wants the sour-salt-bitter flavour of Greg on his tongue, the weight of his cock in his mouth as he digs the tip of his tongue into the frenulum on the draw back and then traces the heavy vein on the underside as he sucks him back in. He wants the tight feeling in is throat as he swallows Greg’s cock down, the scratch and tickle of rough pubic hair against his nose, the watering of his eyes as his lungs scream for air and his throat spasms again and again and again until he can draw back enough to get a breath. He wants Greg’s hand tight in his hair, anchoring him, not controlling him, letting him have this.

Because when he glances up and watches Greg through his eyelashes, the look on his face is something like love.

Tony’s own erection is making itself known, straining at the fly of his fancy slacks. Impressive, really, considering the amount he’s had to drink. He pulls back again, releasing Greg’s penis with an obscenely wet-sounding pop. He wants to say something funny, something witty to distract his brother so that he can sneak a hand into his pants and get himself off, too, but he’s drawing a blank. Instead he takes Greg’s penis in hand and pumps it maddeningly slowly, licking broad strokes over the glans with the flat of his tongue, and fumbles wrong-handed with the button on his pants.

“Well,” Greg says, voice dripping with derision. “It looks like you _can_  get it up.”

Tony pauses in his licking long enough to answer. “I guess I’m not as drunk as should be at this time of night.”

Greg releases his grip on Tony’s hair and slaps his hand away from his cock. He doesn’t pull his pyjama pants up, just shoves them unceremoniously to the ground and steps out of them. Tony takes advantage of having his dominant hand free to make short work of the button and zip, freeing his trapped erection. He rubs his hand roughly over the head, tilting his hips into the contact, throwing his head back and falling backwards, bracing himself with one hand behind him. Put on a show, make it look good.

Greg’s barely watching. “Get undressed,” he snaps, and walks purposefully towards the door leading further into his home. His cock bobs ridiculously just out of time with each step.

Tony kneels there for a moment, teasing his cock with long, slow strokes. It almost doesn’t register for a moment. The last few times they’ve done this haven’t exactly changed around much. Lately it’s just been oral; he blows Greg and if he can, he’s sometimes too drunk, he rubs himself to completion. Sex, they haven’t had actual sex for months. Not since before, well, he’s not sure exactly what prompted it. It could have been the new contract Stark Industries won, although Stark Global Solutions hadn’t been bidding on the same contract, it could have been one of the awards Tony received. Greg’s always been a bit of an enigma and his anger rarely takes the same form twice.

He grabs the back of the couch to steady himself as he rises, and clings to it for support as he carefully removes his shoe and sock from one foot and then the other. He lines them up sloppily with the end of the couch, just out of the way enough that he’s not going to trip over and embarrass himself. He strips off his slacks and jacket and folds them sloppily. They’re a write-off anyway, creased from an evening of lounging around clubs with the occasional hot young thing climbing into his lap, and taken well beyond the point of worn by Greg’s hands and then kneeling on the floor.

“That’s good enough,” Greg says from behind him.

Tony whirls, feeling slightly ridiculous to be standing there in nothing but a half-unbuttoned shirt and a loosened tie, his dick proudly jutting out between the draped silk. Greg’s standing there with a little pump bottle of lube and a foil condom packet in his raised hand. His erection has flagged a little, no longer curving up towards his belly so sharply, and a perverse sense of triumph runs through Tony at the sight. Greg gives him a searching look and he realises that he’s actually got a smug sort of grin on his face.

“Losing interest, sweetheart?” he says.

“Don’t worry, brother, it shouldn’t take your well-practiced mouth long to wake it up again,” Greg sneers.

“Calling me a slut?”

“If the description fits…” Greg stalks across the room and crowds him against the couch again. He wraps one hand in Tony’s tie and drags him forward into a brutal, biting kiss.

Tony answers teeth with teeth, biting at Greg’s lips and questing tongue. He thrusts his hips forward so that his erection slides against Greg’s, sending a shower of sparks down his spine. With his free hand, the one that hasn’t somehow found itself gripping the short hair at the back of Greg’s head, he gathers them both together. His grip is too dry, they’re slicked only with a little precome, but he pumps slowly anyway, feeling Greg come back to full hardness and strain against his hand.

“Turn around,” Greg commands and Tony gives his cock one last tug before he complies. He braces both hands on the back of the couch and spreads his legs. There’s the plastic squeak of the pump on the lube bottle being depressed and Tony shifts his weight and rests his head on the couch between his hands and tries to relax. Distantly, he notes that his face is pressed against silk, not leather.

Greg’s finger is cold and slick when it breaches him on one smooth motion. Tony gasps and clenches down on it, mostly out of surprise.

“You’re tighter than I thought you’d be,” Greg muses in a bored voice. He withdraws the finger and runs it gently, tenderly almost, around the rim of his asshole. “Have you been having a bit of a dry spell?”

“Shut up and just fuck me,” Tony growls.

Greg laughs and slides his finger back in, teasing and stretching the muscle. Tony pushes back into each gentle thrust, greedy for more. He groans as Greg pulls almost all the way out and adds another and the feeling goes from odd to fucking amazing. He tries to stifle an actual moan as the fingers twist and scissor inside him.

“You’re panting for it,” Greg breathes in is ear as he pulls his fingers all the way out. There’s that plastic squeak again as he gets more lube.

“Don’t tell me you don’t—” Tony gasps as three fingers slide back into his hole, “—you don’t love this as much as I do.”

Greg’s deft fingers twist until they find his prostate and torment it with firm strokes, making Tony see stars. He braces his hands more firmly on the couch and bucks backwards, trying to force the fingers deeper. He feels them twist and spread again, stretching him wide. It’s not enough, it’s never enough, and he would make jokes about anal sex and Greg’s cock filling some empty place inside of him but they hit too close to home and he’s just self-aware enough to realise that it’s not a good thing. He moans, low and wanton, as the fingers skate across his prostate again.

“Whore,” Greg says, and it’s in a conversational tone like he’s simply stating the obvious, not insulting him. Tony almost whimpers when he withdraws his fingers but manages to stifle it just as he hears the foil of the condom packet crinkle and tear. Greg’s right hand is on his ass cheek, sudden and warm, spreading him, and then he feels the blunt head of Greg’s cock pressing against his asshole. Tony arches his back further and lets out a long, shaky breath as Greg pushes in in a slow, smooth slide.

The stretch is amazing, it’s always amazing, but even better is the feeling of closeness. The feeling something like love, something like substituting physical for emotional affection, but that’s okay. Sharing so much from the very first, from the womb, they’re less brothers and more two parts of the one person. Joined like this, Tony feels that more than he has since everything fell apart between them somewhere between shared dorm rooms and cafeteria meals.

Greg’s hands, both so warm, one slick with lube, settle on Tony’s hips. He starts thrusting, torturously slowly, a gritty slide that lights up every nerve in Tony’s body. Tony’s cock, hanging full and heavy between his legs, aches for attention but he doesn’t move to take himself in hand yet. For now he just enjoys Greg’s measured thrusts and the slick slide of flesh against flesh, grips leather of the couch so hard it creaks and begins pushing back to meet each slide in. The angle isn’t the greatest, his prostate is barely being brushed on each inward stroke, but it’s enough. It’s enough to send sparks of pleasure up his spine and cause his bobbing cock to leak a trail of precome that he can feel quickly cooling and adding a whole different, not entirely unpleasant, sensation to the mix. Greg’s hands squeeze, fingers digging in over his hipbones, controlling his movements, forcing him to still as he keeps up the slow, firm rhythm. Tony presses his face against the back of the couch and just enjoys each torturously slow thrust, barely able to stifle the noises that want to burst from his throat.

He lets out a startled choking noise when Greg’s right hand suddenly leaves his hip and scrabbles briefly at his collar before tangling in his tie and yanking. The insistent tugging doesn’t give, and Tony has to straighten up or choke and, _oh_ , that changes the angle enough that each stroke skates across his prostate with steady pressure. The tie’s a hard line across his throat, not quite cutting off his air but making it hard to breathe and the lack of oxygen just heightens every other sensation. Greg’s other hand slides around under the tails of his shirt to press against his abdomen and as the thrusts go from long and slow to shallow and hard he hears a low whimpering that he realises is coming from his own throat.

It’s like floating, light headed and detached, and it’s a little like being drunk, but it’s better than both. He feels every hard thrust, every piston inwards with his whole body, from the way the tie tightens minutely around his neck with the rhythm, to the slap of flesh against flesh as Greg’s hips meet his ass, to the strain in the arches of his feet where he vaguely registers that he’s still up on tiptoes. And every nerve ending in between is sending confused signals, tripped up by alcohol and oxygen deprivation, so that his whole body seems to be singing some discordant, shattering note.

Greg’s hand slides down his abdomen to grab his cock and starts stroking it in counterpoint to his thrusts. It’s absurd that he can still be so coordinated when Tony’s hanging on by a thread, caught between pressing backwards onto Greg’s dick or forward into his hand and simply unable to process the decision. It feels like hours, but it’s probably only minutes, and with his brain mostly offline he is wholly flesh, nothing but physical feeling. Then the tie around his neck tightens again, cutting his breath off completely, and Greg’s thumb skates across the head of his cock, dips into the slit and the back out, presses against the frenulum just as he twists his wrist and thrusts hard and deep, and Tony’s coming apart at the seams in the most mind blowing orgasm he’s had in months. He pants as the pressure on his windpipe eases and leans back into Greg’s grip as his brother wraps one arm around his waist, one around his chest and picks up the pace, fucking him through his aftershocks until he, too, stills with a shudder. They stand there, panting in unison, Greg burning a hot, sweaty line up his back, until he unwraps his arms and gently eases free of Tony.

Tony collapses forward, braces himself against the couch again, and waits for his knees to stop trembling and the world to come crashing back in. For just a moment, he forgot about the fatal growth in the back of his head. For just a moment everything was perfect, that hollow space inside him with the jagged edges was filled with something with matching sharp bits, like lock and key.

“Tony,” Greg says in a soft voice. He feels his hand on the back of his neck, stroking upward into his hair and lingering on the back of his head, right where that little ball of death is waiting. The touch is surprisingly gentle, something he didn’t really know Greg had in him, and although Tony wants to bask in it he shakes his head slightly to dislodge Greg’s hand. He feels his brother pull away more than he hears it, Greg’s bare feet silent on the polished floor. 

With Greg gone, disappeared deeper into the penthouse with only a warm light spilling through the doorway to advertise where, the world seems colder. A little less permanent. Tony stares down the back of the couch and tries to muster the energy to straighten up. Greg’s dressing gown is draped over the couch in front of him, he realises, and the white silk is stained, ruined, with long stripes of Tony’s come.

At least the giggle that bursts out of his mouth is near silent. It wouldn’t do for Greg to hear him laughing, to come and see, not when he’s come so close to kindness tonight. Tony doesn’t quite limp over to his clothes, but it’s a close thing. He’s glad he’ll be feeling it tomorrow, carrying something away from this night. He spares a glance to the doorway Greg disappeared through. There’s running water barely audible down the hall, and Greg has left every door open in unspoken invitation. It’s tempting, to crawl into bed and share some human contact, Greg’s contact. Too tempting. Tony turns his back on the warm glow through the doorway and quickly pulls on his trousers and stuffs his feet into his shoes. He pockets his socks rather than take the time to put them on, and doesn’t bother to straighten his tie or button his shirt before he slides his jacket on either. There’s not much point, his car is waiting just outside anyway.

He casts one more glance towards the lit doorway, something twisting sharp and painful in his chest, and sneaks out of the apartment. His head hurts. His heart hurts. He half-limps toward the car and resolutely doesn’t think about five years, about twenty-two minutes. About his twin, his double and opposite, waiting in a lit bedroom behind him. He doesn’t think about anything at all.


End file.
